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Latest reviews – Page 389
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Reviews
Four Sheets To The Wind
Dir/scr: Sterlin Harjo. US. 2007. 85mins.In Sterlin Harjo's debut feature, Four Sheets To The Wind, detailing the emotional and interior journey of a young, somewhat confused Native coming to terms with the death of his father, the young film-maker has carved out a limited though intoxicating piece of American regional ...
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Reviews
Waitress
Dir/Scr: Adrienne Shelly. US. 2007. 104minsThe third and final feature by Adrienne Shelly, who was murdered last aUTUMN, Waitress is a bittersweet, pungent reminder of the formidably smart and gracious touch she possessed in front of and behind the camera. The story of a small town pregnant woman who charmingly ...
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Reviews
My Kid Could Paint That
Dir. Amir Bar-Lev. US. 2007. 81mins.My Kid Could Paint That addresses the sceptical notion that has dogged painting ever since art ceased to depict a pure likeness of its subject - that abstract art often looks like it could have been painted by a child. Amir Bar-Lev's documentary then zooms ...
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Reviews
Dedication
Dir: Justin Theroux. US. 2007. 112mins.After playing a malevolent director in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, actor Justin Theroux takes the plunge down the rabbit hole with Dedication, bringing an electric charge and furious energy to the story of a misanthropic writer of children's books whose professional pairing with a beautiful ...
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Reviews
Slipstream
Dir: Anthony Hopkins. US. 2007. 110mins.Anthony Hopkins' first film as a director since 1996's August is arambling, sporadically engaging experiment which attempts to illustratea man's descent into madness through stream-of-consciousness visualsand distorted, overlapping narratives.Although David Lynch has proved time and again that there is a limitedtheatrical audience and potential cult ...
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Reviews
A Very British Gangster
Dir: Donal MacIntyre. UK. 2006. 97mins.Donal MacIntyre's first feature is a documentary portrait of DominicNoonan, a working-class British gangster who is the head of Manchester's biggest crime family. Both a study in the politics of crime and a fascinating insight into a large poverty-stricken community which defers to gangland rules ...
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Reviews
The Aerial (La Antena)
Dir: Esteban Sapir. Arg. 2007. 90mins.Esteban Sapir's second feature is an intriguing and beautifully-made oddity - a largely silent, black-and-white fantasy that seems inspired in equal measure by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, FW Murnau's The Last Laugh, 1920s surrealism and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Made for a reported budget of ...
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Reviews
Expired
Dir/scr: Cecilia Miniucchi. US. 2007. 110mins. 'I'm the most hated person in the world,' Samantha Morton's shy, emotionally withdrawn parking meter enforcer says at the opening of Expired, a title that proves unfortunately apt. The movie proves exhausting, obliterating patience, understanding or emotional conviction in its portrait of female desire, ...
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Reviews
Catch And Release
Dir: Susannah Grant. US. 2007. 110mins.An ambitious romantic comedy-drama that tries to find love and humor amidst the tragedy of death, Catch And Release is a jumble of tones searching for a consistent rhythm. In her directorial debut, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Susannah Grant touches on sombre subject matter rarely addressed in ...
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Reviews
Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
Dir: Julien Temple. Ire-UK. 2007. 123minsJulien Temple is the film chronicler of British punk music, first with The Great Rock And Roll Swindle (1979) and twenty years later with the much more accomplished The Filth And The Fury (1999). Temple is still on the upswing with Joe Strummer: The Future ...
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Reviews
Son Of Rambow
Dir: Garth Jennings. UK-Fr. 2007. 94mins.An immensely satisfying comedy about childhood friendship, Son Of Rambow is one of those rare British films which is at once culturally specific but directed with such confidence and visual panache that it should enjoy worldwide distribution. The work of hot UK director/producer team Jennings ...
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Reviews
Trade
Dir: Marco Kreuzpaintner. US. 2007. 113mins.While unconvincing as a muck-raking look at how a network of foreign sex-slave traffickers can operate within the US, Trade often works as a gritty, sordid thriller due to the pulsating, viscerally kinetic direction by German director Marco Kreuzpaintner. Working in Mexico City and the ...
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Reviews
Grace Is Gone
Dir/scr: James C Strouse. US. 2007. 92mins.The strengths and limitations of Grace Is Gone exist in conjunction with each other. Intimately conceived and scaled, the work gathers a cumulative emotional power in the plaintive, sharply muted performance by John Cusack as a Midwestern everyman who struggles to find the proper ...
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Reviews
Year of the Dog
Dir/Scr: Mike White. US. 2007. 98mins. Mike White's outre wit and malicious satirical imagination is shown to sometimes spectacular effect in Year of the Dog. It is an alternately strange, puzzling and highly peculiar directing debut about a woman whose private trauma, coupled with her professional failure and romantic disappointment, ...
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Reviews
The Savages
Dir/scr: Tamara Jenkins. US. 2007. 113mins. The story of a brother and sister forced to care for their mentally diminished father, Tamara Jenkins's second feature The Savages examines with sensitivity, intelligence and jolting observation the vicissitudes of suffering, loss and human frailty. It's a serious work sharpened by prickly humour, ...
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Reviews
Zoo
Dir: Robinson Devor. US. 2007. 80mins.The much-awaited Zoo will draw enviable publicity (already evident at Sundance, where it premiered) because of the salacious nature of the story that inspired the film: the death from a perforated colon of a man who had sex with a horse in 2005 at a ...
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Reviews
The Hitcher
Dir: Dave Meyers. US. 2007. 84mins.The recent assembly-line remaking of recognisable horror titles continues with The Hitcher, a dreary updating of the 1986 Rutger Hauer serial-killer hitchhiker thriller, which disregards character empathy in the pursuit of perfunctory scares. Produced by (among others) Michael Bay, this new version of The Hitcher ...
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Reviews
An American Crime
Dir: Tommy O'Haver. US. 2007. 92mins.A horrifiying real-life crime from 1965 Indiana is recreated with almost scientific verisimilitude in Tommy O'Haver's first serious drama, An American Crime. Although often excruciating to watch, it is so well-crafted and well-acted that its portrait of casual savagery in the burbs resonates long after ...
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Reviews
Chicago 10
Dir: Brett Morgen. US. 2007. 103mins.The opening film at this year's Sundance, Chicago 10 revisits the violently suppressed anti-war demonstrations during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the prosecution a year later of the colorful leaders who brought irreverent theatricality to political protest. Brett Morgen's documentary about those closely-watched events, ...
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Reviews
The Serpent (Le Serpent)
Dir: Eric Barbier. Fr. 2007. 119minsArriving a few months after Tell No One, Guillaume Canet's hit transposition of a Harlan Coben suspense bestseller, Eric Barbier's The Serpent performs an equally adept geographic makeover of a novel by late British suspense writer Ted (Get Carter) Lewis, Plender. The story is genre-familiar ...